Governance & Growth
How do political regimes shape economic outcomes? This chapter merges the Polity5 political regime dataset with Penn World Table economic data to explore the relationship between governance and growth across 170+ countries since 1950.
Regime Categories
Time Period
Political Regimes and Economic Growth
Each point represents a country-year observation. Hover over points to see details. The x-axis shows the Polity2 score (-10 autocracy to +10 democracy), while the y-axis shows annual GDP per capita growth.
Regime Transitions Over Time
Watch how countries have moved between political regime types since 1950. The stacked areas show the proportion of countries in each regime category. Use the controls to animate through time or scrub to a specific year.
Transition Patterns Network
This force-directed graph shows which polity scores tend to transition to others. Node size represents the number of country-years at that score. Link thickness shows transition frequency. Blue links show democratization; red shows autocratization.
Regional Governance Patterns
Compare how political regimes vary across world regions. Box plots show the distribution of POLITY2 scores within each region. Select a decade to see how regional patterns have evolved.
Data Sources & Methodology
Learn how we merged Polity5 political regime data with Penn World Table economic indicators.